Last Updated on January 16, 2024 by BVN
S.E. Williams
America has a penchant for war.
Whether it is ours or someone else’s, whether declared or undeclared, this nation stands ready, at any and every given opportunity, to exercise its military prowess directly or by proxy.
Although many of this nation’s undeclared wars are often pursued under the guise of humanitarianism, how can we genuinely accept such a premise when so many humanitarian needs go unfulfilled within the borders of this country.
In 1967, Martin Luther King Jr. spoke about poverty in America. “The curse of poverty has no justification in our age. It is socially as cruel and blind as the practice of cannibalism at the dawn of civilization, when men ate each other because they had not yet learned to take food from the soil or to consume the abundant animal life around them. The time has come for us to civilize ourselves by the total, direct and immediate abolition of poverty.”
More than 50 years since King spoke these words we have advanced militaristically and yet remain stalled when it comes to meeting the human needs of the most vulnerable among us. King spoke about how war “robs society of the funds to uplift the poor.” And yet, we continue to spend with wanton abandon in support of military activities while we squeeze federal pennies in support of the poor. The lack of largess in this regard is evident in the data.
Today, America is making fiscal contributions on at least three war fronts that have been in the news in recent months and years:
On February 24, 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine and by early December 2023, the U.S. had directed more than $75 billion in assistance to Ukraine.
On October 7, 2923, Hamas attacked Israel and although the U.S. already provides Israel $3.8 billion in support of its military and missile defense every year, by early November, 2023, the Biden administration had requested an additional $14.3 billion for added military assistance to Israel.
In another instance, the Department of Defense (DOD) provided about $54.6 billion in military support to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) over the six year period from 2015 through 2021 for actions in Yemen and yet, it could not even confirm whether the military equipment for which it was intended was actually used for unauthorized purposes. On the other hand, the U.S.provided Yemen with $1 billion in humanitarian aid in 2022, as the conditions in that country reached a crisis. It seems in this case America is funding both sides.
This is just the tip of the iceberg in war-related spreading in the last few years. It totals $148.7 billion dollars and America is not even at war.
In the meantime, this country reached a record level of homelessness in 2023 according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, a 12% jump from 2022, In addition, the the Department of Agriculture found hunger in the U.S. rose sharply in 2022. About 44.2 million people lived in households that were food insecure.
The hard reality is that it does not seem to matter which political party is in power, how many people sleep on the street or how many babies go to bed hungry at night in this nation, military might continues to take precedence over human needs. King’s words are as true today as they were more than 50 years ago, “The curse of poverty has no justification in our age.”
Of course, this is just my opinion. I’m keeping it real.